Published by Canongate, 2023, 306 pages.

British Malaya, 1921. The writer William Somerset Maugham (referred to in the book as Willie) is staying with his old friend Robert Hamlyn and his wife Lesley. Willie is going through a difficult time: his writer’s block is compounded by the fact that he has just learned that he has lost his savings because of unwise investments. He worries that his young lover—travelling as his secretary—will leave Willie once he realizes that the money is gone. And Willie also has a wife and child back in London.

Willie is desperate to repeat the success of his last story Rain and hopes that his stay with Robert and Lesley will give him some ideas. Robert warns Lesley about him: “Watch what you say to Willie. He’s my friend, but he’s also a writer, and there’s nothing he loves more than snuffling out people’s scandals and secrets.”

But in spite of her misgivings, Lesley starts to open up to Willie, telling him about her meeting with the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat Sen. She also tells him about the murder of William Steward by Ethel Proudlock, a friend of Lesley’s. Ethel claims that Steward arrived unexpectedly at her home in Kuala Lumpur when she was alone and forced himself on her. The murder of Steward is based on a true story, and Ethel’s trial had caused a sensation at the time. But the bare facts of the case conceal a host of social ills.

I went through a stage where I read everything by Maugham that I could find. I love what Tan Twan Eng has done with this book: it captures the feel of Maugham’s writing—the preoccupation with adultery and betrayal, for instance—but is more layered. Unlike Maugham, who writes mostly about well-to-do British expats in Asia, Tan brings in more about the local people and their lives.

Willie and Lesley are at the centre of the book, and both are well drawn. I could almost hear Willie’s voice: precise and dry. He is a man in crisis, a writer trying to find inspiration again.

Lesley is the link between the worlds of the British and Malay. She and her brother Geoff—who runs a newspaper—grew up in Penang. Tan captures her long and complex marriage to Robert with its secrets as well as the affection between them. Lesley finds a way to reclaim her life through her involvement with Sun Yat Sen’s campaign to overthrow the imperial Chinese dynasty, and eventually through her relationship with the doctor Arthur Loh.

Tan’s writing is luminous, but it is what I have grown to expect from him. There is a wonderful scene when Lesley is taken to the house of doors that gives the book its title. She walks into a room that is full of painted wooden doors suspended from the ceiling. “We walked between the rows of painted doors, our shoulders and elbows setting them spinning slowly. Each door pirouetted open to reveal another set of doors, and I had the dizzying sensation that I was walking down the corridors of a constantly shifting maze, each pair of doors opening into another passageway, and another, giving me no inkling of where I would eventually emerge.”

This is a scene that will stay with me for a long time: it works not only visually, but also at a metaphorical level, as the house of doors opens up new worlds for Lesley.

There are echoes of Maugham’s writing throughout. He turned the Ethel Proudlock incident into a story called The Letter, which formed part of a collection called The Casuarina Tree. A casuarina tree is the central point of the Hamlyns’ garden. It is also the place where both Lesley and Willie go to think things through.  

This is a beautifully written book that captures a particular time and place. It draws on Maugham’s writings, adding greater depth and complexity. It is a book about love, relationships, betrayals and about storytelling.